Sexual abuse on Metro school bus spurs legislative action

A Nashville mother’s difficulty in getting information about her disabled daughter’s alleged sexual abuse aboard a Metro school bus has spurred some state lawmakers into action.

The abuse occurred in 2006 when a mentally disabled boy allegedly sexually assaulted a now 11-year-old autistic girl on a Metro school bus, just a few feet behind the driver.

After the incident, the girl’s parents knew that their daughter had been assaulted but could not get any information for months on what exactly happened.

The mother said her daughter’s case was passed back and forth between the state Department of Children’s Services (DCS), Metro Police and the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office.

“We just never learned anything from anybody,” the mother said. “They all blamed each other.”

The City Paper does not print the names of sexual assault victims or their parents.

The Nashville mother took that message to the legislature’s Select Committee on Children and Youth on Monday, testifying in favor of legislation that would require the release of previously confidential DCS records.

Those records on the juvenile could be released if a non-offending parent or guardian of an abused child requests them, the legislation states.

Rep. Sherry Jones (D-Nashville), who is sponsoring the legislation, said that DCS needs to release the information to the parent of the abused “so they can get help for their child.”

“She went for six months and couldn’t find out what happened to her daughter,” Jones said of the victim’s mother. “And that was just unnecessary that they acted like that towards her.”

Firstly, driving a school bus is probably one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, for anyone besides a middle-aged woman (which I am not). Some people have insisted I should try to be a "substitute bus driver"; such even more dangerous (no job security). Though I have never been a teacher nor bus-driver, the Tennessee Teacher's Union has let me down in a very dangerous way (from within a TEP in the late 1990's). I wrote them scores of letters. Nextly, parents should be worried about how much "fore-play" goes on between teens on busses; like between nieve young girls and slightly older black guys on the bus, (I'm not even "prejudice